// TV Dinners //
An exhibition by Susannah Hewlett

22 April - 21 May
OPEN: Fri/Sat /Sun // 11am-4pm

Opening event:
Friday 21 April // 6-8pm
* All welcome *

Susannah Hewlett’s work crossbreeds live performance, video, comedy, theatre and sound. She performs and exhibits in galleries, theatres, museums, cinemas, nightclubs and festivals.  She is an associate artist of legendary queer performance collective Duckie.

Fixated on popular culture, her work disarms audiences, using comedy as a strategy through character-led performance, subtle interventions and videos.  Humour often gives way to discomfort revealing the darker aspects of human behaviour and our symbiosis with consumerism.

TV Dinners brings together some of her work from the last 15 years - a buffet selection of her finest cold cuts; a platter of audio and televisual highlights and be-wigged character performance, including the return of perennial idiot Chris Titmas, egomaniacal VSS Shopping Channel host and ‘personality’.

#TVDinners

susannahhewlett.com
@suhewlett      

// rubbing up against the edges of experience //

This exhibition is the outcome of Caitlyn Holly Main and Jake Shepherds first dedicated project working as a duo. This body of work is an ode to friendship - reflecting on the support provided to one another, and empathetic avenues of creativity that come through collaboration.

This new collection of prints, drawings and frames ruminates over many themes which run parallel through both artists practices - they are interested in ritual, Scottish folklore, gestures of care, tactility, domestication, tenderness and nourishment. At points this project reflects on the specificity of working within Aberdeen as a creative - acknowledging the significance of friendship, care and support in the art scene, and considering modes of sustenance .

The title of show 'rubbing up against the edges of experience' is taken from lyrics within Big Thiefs 2022 song 'Spud infinity' - a song that playfully dances between the monumental and the everyday, speaking of celestial bodies, ants and garlic bread in the same breath. Similarly, the exhibition pulls disparate references together to produce a specific language of touch, both familiar and contemporary. Looking at the physicality of print, and the unique but commonplace materials found in workshops (such as skrim, separations, inky residues) provides a tactile undercurrent.

Caitlyn Holly Main is an artist and writer living in Aberdeen. She has a multi-disciplinary practice, spanning sculpture, writing, installation, print, drawing and moving image. She is concerned with care, intimacy, notions of romance and consumption. She creates works that explore disembodiment, ghostliness and desire. Caitlyn is interested in how and what we eat – foodstuffs inherent relation to class and politics, foods proximity to desire, and symbolism of nutrition or cannibalism. Recent work has played with physical and allegorical entwinements of gluttony, hunger, domestication, and lust. Caitlyn Main is an artist and creative practitioner with a multidisciplinary practice.

Caitlyn Holly Main teaches at Gray’s School of Art in the Contemporary Art Practice department. Recent projects include a solo exhibition and publication launch with Peacock Visual Arts (Aberdeen), group exhibitions at 16 Nicholson Street (Glasgow) and Look Again with MIASMA (Aberdeen), and the Studio Projects residency at Market Gallery (Glasgow).

Jake Shepherd Graduated from Gray’s School of Art in 2018, and has since worked across numerous projects in the city both as an artist and curatorial practitioner. Jake is one of the co-founding members of Tendency Towards. Most recently facilitating and participating in the collaborative project ‘Tactics for Togetherness’, an exhibition and series of events hosting a variety of interdisciplinary works from emerging practitioners in Aberdeen. Jake works as a creative practitioner supporting and delivering sessions and engaging with vulnerable children and young people across the city. (Care experienced, LGBTQ+) Jake also works as a Project worker with Children’s Parliament, through a rights-based approach and using creativity as a vehicle to engage children in the work. Currently working on a programme called ‘Dignity in School’ supporting children to have their voices and ideas heard to influence school policy and co-produce resources for adults in schools.

Previous Projects:

// Aberdeen Open City //

Aberdeen Open City was an exhibition which aimed to showcase the range of contemporary art practices shaped by, or located in, the city and identified loose overlaps and problematics that overlap in these works.

The trio of trials that have warped the city beyond all recognition in the last decade, those of energy transition, Brexit, and the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, have inevitably impacted on our shared cultural ecology. A range of new initiatives and new artist groupings have begun to emerge in the twenties, giving hope that the fragmented nature of the city’s visual arts scene may be beginning to cohere in supportive and interesting ways.

There is a sense that all those who help to shape Aberdeen’s cultural ecology- artists, cultural workers, civil servants, writers, funders, politicians, audiences, are beginning to engage seriously with the ways in which the city can play host not just to short term festivals and weekend spectaculars, but to nurture and cherish longer term creative practices and endeavours.

Here is work by four graduates from the city’s Gray’s School of Art, all at different stages of their careers, exhibiting together for the first time; new drawings by Sofya Tagor (graduated in Painting, 2019), woodcuts by Claire Roberts (graduated in Printmaking, 1993), Marie-Chantal Hamrock’s (graduated Contemporary Art Practice, 2020) installation of drawings and photographs, and Saoirse Horne’s (graduated Painting, 2022) sound installation. The exhibition is accompanied by a full colour catalogue.

This exhibition, covering painting, printmaking, installation and sound art, highlights the work of four artists; two based in Aberdeen, and two who studied here and now live elsewhere but maintain a close relationship with the city.

The exhibition is curated by Jon Blackwood of Gray’s School of Art, RGU, and Sally Reaper of Look Again.

// Origin //

Origin is a project led by 3D Design Staff at Gray’s School of Art, Daniel Sutherland and Ben Durack. The pop up Shop filled the space at 1-5 George Street with products made from locally collected plastic waste. Customers were able to browse the range of planters and pick up great gifts for Christmas and beyond.

Visitors were also able to view a range of future product concepts and vote for which product they would like to see put into production in 2023.

The public were also able to donate any plastic waste at the shop, which would be used to create products in 2023. The plastic had to have a number 5 on it, and needed to be clean, white or colourful.

#dobetter